Fittingly, on the federal holiday dedicated to the selfless work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I saw the movie Selma. I know, kinda trendy, but the movie's release deliberately coincided with this holiday and I needed a day off to see it and I wasn't teaching today. Although I'm an academic historian by trade, I am concerned less with how the movie got its history wrong and how LBJ defenders are up in arms, and more with the story and drama. This is, after all, why I go see a movie. My instant reactions are captured as bullet points.

* It was a tear-jerker for sure. Quite emotional and poignant. * I liked when King was in jail (with Ralph Abernathy, I believe?) and he said something to the effect of: what good is the right to vote if blacks don't possess the literacy to read a ballot? King similarly made the point about economic justice. This relates to how I'm always telling my students that the word "liberty," has multiple meanings and contexts - the right to vote is very different than the right to a fair trial, fair housing, environmental protection, or the right to a certain wage. * While I am a critic of organized religion for many good reasons, it is hard not to be moved by the way King, in his many speeches, appropriated Christianity for the cause of social justice. Today, far too many Christians are concerned with what are, in my mind, the wrong issues, and need to focus on economic inequality, climate change, and US foreign policy. Some are coming around, but not enough.* I firmly believe that the followers of today's Tea Party are the intellectual descendants of those who opposed the Civil Rights Movement. The Confederate flag, doctrine of "states' rights" and labeling even the most moderate of progressive reforms as "communist" were alive and well in the 1960s, and are noticeable in today's Tea Party movement. Confederate flags are often shown proudly at Tea Party rallies and Tea Party adherents seem obsessed with issues of race, including immigration, Obama's birth certificate, photo ID laws, and preventing so-called "voter fraud." Sadly, too much of the Republican Party today is focused on suppressing the vote rather than attracting new followers among demographic groups that have historically been lukewarm to the party. They've sure given up on persuasion! This isn't just conjecture. Non-partisan commissions have noted how voter ID laws have hurt turnout among young and minority voters. There is also Harvard historian Jill Lepore's penetrating analysis in The Whites of Their Eyes and famed sociologist Theda Skocpol's data on the demographics of the Tea Party, who tend to be older, male, white, conservative, libertarian, evangelical Christian, etc. This whole waving of the Confederate flag has really got to stop...* I couldn't help but notice the portraits of previous presidents in Johnson's office, particularly of Jackson and Washington, who were both slave owners. In fact, I'm convinced that this was deliberate on the part of the director. In the Alabama governor's office, meanwhile, there was a portrait of a Confederate general. * Overall, this was a great movie and well worth the cost of seeing it in the theaters. I'll leave it up to the actual critics to decide whether this was worthy of an Oscar. Too bad it didn't really get that many nominations...

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Disclaimer: This is my personal blog. While I do my best to offer reasonable conclusions based on verifiable, peer reviewed evidence, I neither speak for my employers, nor do I require my students to read or agree with the thoughts expressed here. Opinions are my own.